Data from: Experimental evidence of long-term reproductive costs in a colonial nesting seabird

Trade-offs between current and future reproduction are central to the
evolution of life histories. Experiments that manipulate brood size
provide an effective approach to investigating future costs of current
reproduction. Most manipulative studies to date, however, have addressed
only the short-term effects of brood size manipulation. Our goal was to
determine whether survival or breeding costs of reproduction in a
long-lived species manifest beyond the subsequent breeding season. To this
end, we investigated long-term survival and breeding effects of a
multi-year reproductive cost experiment conducted on Black-legged
Kittiwakes (Rissa tridactyla), a long-lived colonial nesting seabird. We
used multi-state capture-recapture modeling to assess hypotheses regarding
the role of experimentally reduced breeding effort and other factors,
including climate phase and colony size and productivity, on future
survival and breeding probabilities during the 16-year period following
the experiment. We found that forced nest failures had a positive effect
on breeding probability over time, but had no effect on long-term
survival. This apparent canalization of survival suggests that adult
survival is the most important parameter influencing fitness in this
long-lived species, and that adults should pay reproductive costs in ways
that do not compromise this critical life history parameter. When declines
in adult survival rate are observed, they may indicate populations of
conservation concern.